t shoot up into the light. You cannot
dig it all up and throw it out without tearing asunder the net-work of
roots which organically connects the living with the dead.

Bjoernson, though he is an evolutionist, is far removed from the
philosophic temper in his dealings with the obsolete or obsolescent
remnants in political and religious creeds. He has the healthful
intolerance of strong conviction. He is too good a partisan to admit
that there may be another side to the question which might be worth
considering. With magnificent ruthlessness he plunges ahead, and with a
truly old Norse pugnacity he stands in the thick of the fight, rejoicing
in battle. Only combat arouses his Titanic energy and calls all his
splendid faculties into play.

Even apart from his political propaganda the years 1870-74 were a period
of labor and ferment to Bjoernson. The mightier the man, the mightier the
powers enlisted in his conversion, and the mightier the struggle. A
tremendous wrench was required to change his point of view from that of
a childlike, wondering believer to that of a critical sceptic and
thinker. In a certain sense Bjoernson never took this step; for when the
struggle was over, and he had readjusted his vision of life to the
theory of evolution, he became as ardent an adherent of it as he had
ever been of the _naive_ Grundtvigian miracle-faith. And with the deep
need of his nature to pour itself forth--to share its treasures with all
the world--he started out to proclaim his discoveries. Besides Darwin
and Spencer, he had made a study of Stuart Mill, whose noble sense of
fair-play had impressed him. He plunged with hot zeal into the writings
of Steinthal and Max Mueller, whose studies in comparative religion
changed to him the whole aspect of the universe. Taine's historical
criticism, with its disrespectful derivation of the hero from food,
climate, and race, lured him still farther away from his old Norse and
romantic landmarks, until there was no longer any hope of his ever
returning to them. But when from this promontory of advanced thought he
looked back upon his idyllic love-stories of peasant lads and lasses,
and his taciturn saga heroes, with their predatory self-assertion, he
saw that he had done with them forever; that they could never more
enlist his former interest. On the other hand, the problems of modern
contemporary life, of which he had now gained quite a new comprehension,
tempted him. The romantic produc